52 Weeks – Week 3 – Decision

The whole five-part quintet thing was composed as part of my Music 288 class (Composition 2) back in 2001, when I was still a music composition pre-major before I decided to jump ship and move to the media music department. Each assignment that semester was to write a piece for the same group of five instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and randomly, euphonium. Then we had what was termed a “real studio experience” where we’d go to Studio Y on campus and give our music to the players, where they would sight-read it and it would get recorded. We weren’t allowed to talk to them about performance notes or anything; we had to stay sequestered in the booth, so the performance was based strictly on whatever we had written on the score and parts.

This particular assignment was the first of five, and sadly, it was also the only one that I can’t remember now what the exact assignment was. It sounds ternary with repeating motives, so the assignment probably had something to do with that. Sadly, on this recording, the flute player didn’t show up for some reason, so the guy playing the flute was just one of the students in the composition class who played flute for a year or so in junior high, which is why the last note is kind of strained and stuff. Still, it’s kind of fun, and it’s one of the few pieces I have a live recording of, so that makes it special.